Well, Agent Coulson, make sure mine is on record, too. Don’t get me wrong, Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s follow up episode was decent, but I kind of felt like I was re-watching the Pilot. I feel like after the team pulled together in last week’s episode, another story focused on that just sort of belabored the point that, together, “they are that good.” Fortunately, we did get a bit more about these characters than they could manage to fit in the Pilot; not to mention, the ending cameo was AWESOME!

So, as was spelled out for us last week, we see that Skye has joined the team as a “consultant.” The comment is made that she’s a consultant, “like Stark,” which I know was one of those little lines that they had to drop to make us feel like we’re in the same universe, but if Stark is a consultant, what are Rogers, Banner, and Thor?

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

Anywho, aside from that, this week’s big deal (and episode title) was the 0-8-4, which turned out to be nothing all that exciting. I was optomistic when they pointed that the last 0-8-4 was Mjölnir, but it turned out to be just another case of referencing the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Unfortunately, it felt like finding this 0-8-4 was nothing more than to get Coulson (Clark Gregg) in touch with his ex, Camilla Reyes, who’s purpose was nothing more than to basically get the team to have their “Avengers, Assemble” moment. That’s not to say, however, that the banter between the two wasn’t entertaining, because it was. Coulson’s charm was cranked up to 11, as he showed off his knickknacks and reminisced with Camilla over their past relationship, but that’s where it ended. It just didn’t feel like we will ever see her again, or that we should, or that we should even want to, like she was a complete throw away character.

On our main character front, there seems to be the makings of a love triangle blossoming between Agent Ward (Brett Dalton), Skye (Chloe Bennet), and Fitz (Iain De Caestecker). Of course, they played to the two best-looking people on the show; the tension between them, in all fairness, was so thick, you could feel it whenever they shared the screen. Their relationship was taken a step further during one of the better parts of the episode (and, really, the show so far), when Skye takes her turn to explain why she believes in this Rising Tide we keep hearing about, instead of having to hear about why S.H.I.E.L.D. does what they do again for the 20th time. It wasn’t much of a shocker that this made Ward look at Skye in a new light, but, as we see a while later into the episode, there’s a bit more to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s newest consultant than most of us (or, maybe just Agent Ward and I) expected. To be clear, I kind of just expected her to follow the clichés that her character has been following so far, but I could be happily surprised.

Unfortunately, I still don’t have much to say about the (so far) “preliminary” members of the team. We saw a bit more action from Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), or “The Cavalry,” as she is so referred to in legends passed down at S.H.I.E.L.D.’s training facilities. But, that action is all we saw, and it’s already what little we know about her character. She’s a no-nonsense bad ass, who doesn’t want to be a bad ass, but can’t help it, and that’s about it. Her fight scenes are fun to watch, and a much more elegant alternative to Ward’s also-appreciated gritty fighting, but I’d like to see more of her, as well as Agent Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge), who’s basically been non-existent up to this point.

While last week filled me with hope, this week gave me a reason to worry. I found myself shouting at my TV, “Alright, we get it, they don’t always agree, but make a great team! Let’s move on!” I know, that’s a long shout, more like a loud conversation with my TV, but still. Is anyone else already sick of having this spelled out for them? I felt like I was watching a different version of the Pilot, in which the theme is still that all of the right pieces fit together to make a great team. If they can get themselves unstuck from this repeat, I still think that Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. could be great. We’ll have to tune in next week to see if they can get past this stutter.

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